Job Training That Gets Results

Ten Principles of Effective Employment Programs

Introductory chapter | Table of Contents  

“With fresh insights gleaned from decades of experience, Michael Bernick addresses the human-capital challenge of preparing low-wage workers for the global economy. His realistic focus on incentives provides a road map for future policy.”

—Michael Milken, chairman, Milken Institute

“In this book, Mr. Bernick goes beyond the conventional social welfare and social services strategies for unemployed and low income workers. He shows how our nation’s job training systems can be reshaped to get results.”

—Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California

“The United States is entering the age of the global economy. Michael Bernick’s book shows how we can build an effective worker training and retraining system to succeed in this economy. Bernick headed the largest state department of labor and brings extensive practical experience to this book.”

—Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, 1996–2001

“Mike Bernick’s ‘Job Training That Gets Results: Ten Principles of Effective Employment Programs’ is compelling because the principles flow clearly from three virtues rarely found in one author: an in-depth understanding of the relevant research, practical experience as a program manager, and a refreshing willingness to challenge conventional wisdom.”

—Steve Crawford, policy director, National Governors Association

“The book for employment practitioners and all of us concerned about America’s future workforce.”

—San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

Job training continues to pose big challenges for workforce policymakers and practitioners as the twenty-first century takes root. For instance, while governments have genuinely improved the effectiveness of job training activities by making them more market-oriented, and while employment among welfare recipients has surged as a result of reforms enacted during the 1990s, labor-market success among the disabled and low-wage populations continues to lag.

Recognizing that training programs can’t be all things to all people, Michael Bernick, a former director of California’s Employment Development Department (EDD), sets out to show the types of training programs that do work and to describe for whom they work. He identifies ways to improve performance among Workforce Investment Act (WIA) contractors while exploring the best uses for state discretionary WIA funds. He also describes what it takes to make an effective career ladder program, how postemployment welfare retention or skill advancement programs can succeed, and the type of training that workers with disabilities must go through to get and retain jobs.

Bernick organizes the operational and policy lessons he learned from his five-year tenure as EDD director (and for more than 25 years in the job training field) into “Ten Principles." These principles, enlightened by the successes and failures of several training programs implemented in California before, during, and since his stint as EDD director, are aimed at policymakers and professionals who administer training programs in both the private and the public sector. Those principles are

1. The Unemployment Rate: A Strong Private Economy Does Far More to Reduce Unemployment Than Any Government Program
2. Job Training: Build on the Market Orientation of Effective Job Training Programs to Build an Effective Job Training System
3. The Working Poor: A Big Part of the Conventional Wisdom on the Working Poor Being in Dead End Jobs is False—but Not All
4. Building Career Ladders for the Working Poor: Designing Effective Career Ladders Requires Single- and Mulitemployer Skills Upgrading
5. Maintaining Career Ladders for the Working Poor: Sustaining Effective Career Ladders Means Influencing the Structure and Craft of Jobs
6. Welfare Reform: Build on the Success of Welfare Reform with Targeted Postemployment Strategies
7. Workers with Disabilities: A New World of Employment Exists
8. Technology Jobs: The Emerging “New Technician” Jobs Provide an Important Niche Training Market
9. Affinity Groups: The Best Antipoverty Efforts Go Beyond Government Programs
10. Globalization: The Job Training Professional Assumes a Greater Role in a World of Globalization, Competition, and Outsourcing.

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